About Robert Stubblefield
Mr. Robert Stubblefield was born in the county of Halifax, State of Virginia, on the twenty-third day of November, A. D. 1793. At the age of nineteen, at the first call for volunteers, he entered the service of his country in the War of 1812. He was one of only two men out of 96 enlistees to survive yellow fever and be discharged from service. Once he recovered from his illness, he joined his brother, Edward, on a trip to Ohio. Edward had previously spent time in Ohio, where he acquired some land. Robert, desiring to see the country, traveled to Ohio with Edward, where they became close friends of the Adam Funk family.
Robert married Adam’s daughter, Sarah, on the fourteenth day of April 1814. Sarah subsequently died on the thirteenth day of December, 1821. Eight days after her death, her mother, Mrs. Nancy Funk, also died. The passing of these women prompted the Stubblefield and Funk families to accept religion into their lives by joining the Methodist Episcopal Church.
By this first marriage to Sarah, Robert had four children: Absalom, Ann, Mary, and John. On the twenty-ninth day of July 1822, he married Dorothy Funk, the sister of his former wife. By this latter marriage, Robert had nine more children: George Meley, Jesse, Francis, Adam, Eve, Edward, Isaac, Frank, William Royal, Chase, and Charles Wesley. In all, Robert had thirteen children.
Robert and Dorothy, along with their five children, followed Dorothy’s brothers, Absalom and Issac Funk, to Illinois and on the eighteenth of December 1824, reached Funks Grove, stopping at the only house in the grove, a log-cabin, built by William Brock and family, with whom the two bachelor brothers boarded. In Mr. Brock's log cabin, with only one room, these three families spent six days together, doubtless very uncomfortably. During the interim, Robert, with the assistance of the entire community, erected a second log-cabin in the grove, near the first mentioned. In these two cabins, the entire inhabitants of Funks Grove passed their first winter in Illinois — the winter of 1824-1825.
During the next spring and summer, Robert erected another more commodious and comfortable log-cabin on the bank of Sugar Creek on the north side of Funks Grove, into which he moved his family in September 1825. In the meantime, Jesse Stubblefield was added to the family on July 30th, 1825, the first white child born in Funks Grove. About five years after this, Mr. Stubblefield built a third, larger log cabin, in which his family lived for eighteen years.
This new structure had a large room which served the needs of the family and the purposes of public worship. Religion played a prominent role in the lives of both the Funk and Stubblefield families. A devotion which culminated in the erection of the Funks Grove Church in 1864 – 1865.
Robert's final home was a large frame house, some two hundred yards northwest of his former home, where he continued to reside until the time of his death.
